Last week I was listening to talk radio
as I was driving. I only caught part of the program but the host was
expressing his opinion that our nation is more fragmented than ever
before. He believes that the United States may ultimately be heading
towards another civil war. Unlike the first civil war where there
were two side, the north and the south, fighting for their causes.
The next civil war will be more like the war in Lebanon where there
are numerous factions fighting for a number of causes.
Now I don't know that I would agree
about the US heading towards another civil war but he did bring up
something that I have noticed. It may seem to many people that
Americans seek dozens of different paths, that we have always been a
fragmented society. Each of us out for ourselves or our own cause.
But give us a big enough cause and we traditionally have pulled
together to accomplish the impossible. When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor
we left political differences, religious differences and with one
mind one purpose pulled together to do the job that needed to be
done. When given the right incentive we became of one mind and that
made us powerful.
But perhaps twenty years ago I noticed
that this nation was becoming divided and fragmented. It seemed to
me that we were becoming a nation of special interest. Every one out
for his own cause and it seemed that no cause was big enough to bring
us together as one.
Terrorist attacked this nation the day
we remember as 9/11. The death they inflicted that day was greater
than what Japan inflicted on Pearl Harbor. Yet still today we're
discussing what should have been the appropriate response. We did
what we did but it certainly wasn't with any consensus or unity of
purpose.
The recent faltering of the economy is
a more recent example. The political parties stand behind their
firmly entrenched beliefs neither side willing to compromise to get
the economy going. Meanwhile millions are still unemployed unable to
find work and millions more are underemployed. The poverty level in
America has reached a level never seen since the days the “Great
Society” was launched. The political parties, unable to work
together, have just wasted fifty years of the war on poverty. The
sequester cuts were meant to be so draconian that the political
parties would be forced to come together to make reasonable budget
cuts. But once again there was no unity, nothing was accomplished.
The military and the poor are going to pay the price for our
inability to find unity of purpose. Yes indeed we are a fragmented
society and as I'm involved in charity I speak from experience that
it's the poor who are paying the price.
The Christian church has been divided
and fragmented even longer than our society. It could well be said
that society has in fact learned about being divided and fragmented
from the church. It seems every time someone has a different
interpretation of a scripture a new denomination is formed. One
church says that the book of Revelation, in the Bible, is about the
ending of the Roman government. Another one says that they are
heretics because Revelation is about the second coming of Christ.
Even something that is a basic as “How
to be Saved” is disputed territory. Go look on the website of a
dozen different churches and you will likely find a dozen different
answers to that. I've studied the scriptures for many years but I've
pretty much given up reading anything from Christian web sites
because I always come away confused. If I come away confused how can
we expect someone who has never read the bible to learn anything.
Of course if we separate over minor
differences of opinion of scripture passages you know that we will
not cooperate with each other on more mundane issues. The community
I recently moved from had two different pastors organizations and
held two different community Thanksgiving services because even the
pastors and the churches were divided and fragmented. An ecumenical
service that was held in the community for something like twenty
years had ended because there could not be found enough people
willing to come together to plan the service.
There was a song made popular by Sonny
and Cher. United we stand, Divided we fall. There is a truth in
that song that somehow seems even more appropriate today than it did
back then. We are allowing our differences our special interests to
drive us further apart, dividing us, fragmenting us making sure that
we won't work together, assuring that nothing gets accomplished.
When we once again find the will to become united, to work together
we will once again become great. This applies especially so for the
church. Our mission is too important to let those differences
continue to separate and fragment us. O' what could be accomplished
when the liberal churches, evangelical churches, the catholic
churches, all the churches can unite together to accomplish God's
work. It is what Jesus would want.
